People like stories without plots, the kinds that sort of wander around in twenty different directions and ends on a completely insane note that would usually leave you wondering why you even read the book in the first place. Until you realize how alike that book was to your life. That's why she decided to write this. Because she had got absolutely no idea where she was going with it, just like she had no idea where she was going with her life, or if she was going to finish her life- let alone the book.



Cliche books would have described this as a ‘hot summer day’, but Claire thought that saying it like that would have romanticized the night way too much. She would have worded it more as a ‘musky, damp afternoon with little sunshine and a pathetic lack of weather’. She lived in the middle of somewhere, which was worse than the middle of nowhere seeing as she couldn’t even disappear into the nowhere-ness. She chewed on the end of her pen, pretending that she was procrastinating when really she was just waiting for the teacher to come in and tell her it was time for her to go home and she could pretend she had really been working hard and maybe convince herself of that too. There was a hairline crack on the top of the ceiling and it was completely depressing. She didn’t know why it was depressing exactly, but you could be sure of the fact that it was.



She chewed on her lip, a habit she had started when she was 9 and was even harder to continue now that she had her braces. Lines of potential sad poetry ran through her mind and she ignored them, seeing as she had no time to attempt to make her pen write as fast as her mind raced- because she didn’t- she had thinking to do.



Mrs Harrison clicked into the room with her annoying black heels and smiled at Claire sympathetically “Hey Claire, how much did you get done?”



Claire contemplated if she could get away with just saying ‘none’ and maybe avoid Mrs.Harrison's disappointed look- it was always pretty bad.



Claire looked at Mrs. Harrison wearily “none”



The disappointed teacher made another clicking sound- but this time with her mouth “And why is that?”



The tired student glanced at the clock “Lazy, I guess”




The thing about Claire is that she had settled on being unnaturally honest with people and seeing if maybe she was diagnosed with some disorder. The truth was so rare these days that people needed to diagnose you with something to actually comprehend why you were telling them anything even close to the truth. Once she went a few months without saying much to anyone and they diagnosed her with social anxiety, when really she just didn’t like anyone or have anything to say to them.

Her conversations were usually like this:



Math teacher: Claire? Are you paying attention?



And since she obviously wasn’t and didn’t intend to, Claire continued doodling on her book



Mom: Claire, clean the kitchen



And since that obviously wasn’t going to happen, Claire would stay silent and turn up the volume of the Television.



Her mom by this point had caught on to her little game of social experiments, but there wasn’t much you could do or say to Claire to get her to stop things, seeing as she was completely and 100% over life altogether. She had decided at the young age of 13 that she wasn’t really living if she wasn’t doing it the way she wanted. She wanted to die young anyways, so living the way that she wanted to was a sure way to do that.



Mrs. Harrison blinked and coughed quietly “Well then, alright, I guess you can go. Try to be more productive at home, alright?”



Claire shrugged “I probably won’t be, but alright”



She didn’t bother looking back at Mrs. Harrison, because she was sure that her face was twisted with confusion and that made Claire very happy. She had little interest in the fake smiles that lit up no ones eyes these days, so she would shoot for different emotions instead. Happiness was a hard thing to achieve.



She slung her backpack over her left shoulder, because her right shoulder was sore from volleyball practice. Let’s not mention that volleyball practice ended two summers ago when she decided that she was more into ballet and gymnastics, because of her body type- but that didn’t stop her from being sore, solely from volleyball practice.



Her mom would probably be here in a few minutes, but living in the middle of somewhere gave Claire the advantage of losing other people- just never herself. She walked for a few blocks, her ears clogged with her loud music that drowned her thoughts. There was a park a few blocks over, the special thing about it was that it was hidden. No one bothered to go through the path between the trailor park and the garbage dump. Between those two unsavory places was a group of elders and misfits that would hang out at the park. There were regulars at this park, she was one of them. No one ever thought to look for here, unless they already knew about how lovely it was.



Zocca greeted her in her thick russian accent “Claire!”



Claire smiled and shrugged off her backpack “Hey Zocca, nice haircut”



The thin woman patted at her new short, bob and smiled weakly “You think so?”



Claire laughed to herself, it was funny how even at such an old age people were still insecure about their appearance “Yes, you look beautiful, Zocca”



Zocca smiled and went back to playing chess with some man that Claire recognized, but she could never remember his name. She collapsed under a tree and deliberately avoided doing her homework because she simply didn’t really feel like doing it. The sun always shone brighter here, literally. There was something about it’s placement and shading that caught the light perfectly, just under this tree and she got a ton of sunlight.



Claire was nothing special, she was blonde- but not the really pretty home depot shade of blonde, more the pale-blonde-dangerously-close-to-white-wow-thats-some-pale-hair kind of blonde. Her eyes were a dark shade of brown, but light enough to see her pupils and the contrast of her hair and eyes. She wore it down, she couldn’t be bothered to tie it up into some sexy messy bun at the top of her head (even though she was convinced that the girls that had those ‘messy’ buns, purposely made it messy).



Claire’s mind was poison. She thought about some really f*ed up things on a daily basis. The kind that when verbalized sort of threw everyone off and made them think she was emotionally unstable. It made her laugh because, wasn’t everyone unstable? Working themselves until they die, backstabbing, lying should be a disorder in itself- and she was judged for being suicidal. What a wonderful world.



Her phone started spazzing out and so she answered it lazily “Hello?”



Her mother answered in an annoyed voice “Hey, Claire, where are you? I’m in front of the school”



Claire sighed “I’m not at school”



A silence leaked through the phone for a few pregnant seconds “...Well then where are you, Claire?”



She shrugged “I’m not really going to tell you”



Her mom sighed “Alright, can you make it back to the school?”



“Sure” Claire hung up before her mom could say anything else to her.



***

Claires walk home consisted of boring, typical things happening. She counted her footsteps, tried to avoid stepping on cracks, hopped over leaves that she could have simply stepped on, or walked around like a normal human being would have. The only half-interesting, out of the ordinary type thing that happened was that she found a rock. You may think this isn't out of the ordinary, but when was the last time you saw a random rock? Not a cement rock, but a perfectly smoothed over rock? Maybe you see those every day, but for a teenage girl living in Los Angeles, it was rare. So of course, Claire shoved the rock into her back pocket and continued pushing her thumb nail into the pad of her pointer finger to reassure herself that she wasn't starting a slow and painful process of dying of boredom- it could happen.

Once Claire had tried dying her hair brown so maybe she could look remotely normal, not stand out in such a weird-albino-ish way. Of course, her seemingly superhuman hair never really let the hair dye cling the way it should and the brown would rub off onto random surfaces, such as her desk. This is relevant because of the fact that Claire was thinking about how her mums hair was brown, her dads hair was red, but somehow she was stuck with hair the color of watery mustard.

Her car ride home was full of tension and silences that could've been filled with noise and voices- like most silences are. It kind of appauled Claire that people didn't enjoy the pockets of silence more, seeing as it spoke so much louder than actual words. I mean honestly, who really cares about the weather? And who ever actually answers the 'how are you' question honestly? Who ever really cares about small talk? So her mum had turned the radio on and hummed the tune to some jazz song that bothered Claire until they got home.

"Claire? Have you got any homework?" the mother of Claire chirped (seeing as you were expecting 'Claires mum' to be written, it was appropriate for it to say 'the mother of Claire')

What a normal child would have done in this situation is smiled and said no, but Claire - being the abnormally plain child that she is - made the conversation go somewhat like this:

Claire: yes, but I don't plan on doing it

Mother-of-Claire: ...Excuse me?

Claire: I said, "yes, but I don't plan on doing it"

Mother-of-Claire: ...Well why not?

Claire: I'll most likely procrastinate without any actual plan of doing my work.

Mother-of-Claire: Well do you need some help..?

Claire: Probably with my work. Probably with my mental health and life as it is, but I don't want any and I probably won't accept any either, thanks for asking.

Mother-of-Claire: ...you're so weird

Claire: Mums aren't supposed to say that.

it would end with Claire closing the car door and trudging into her room, because she never just walked anywhere- she always trudged, seeing as she was unhappy to go everywhere. That was the thing about Claires everywhere- it wasn't anywhere. Claire wanted to travel the world and she was stuck in this town, with her suicidal thoughts and a pocket full of social expiriments. She was trapped with small minded people and grades that would define her entire life and carve out her future. She was stuck here, for the time being and it was completely depressing. So her everywhere consisted of this town and wherever her parents drove her. Nothing was in her control, really, which is why she did so many social expiriments, because at least she was in control of how she acted.